Many bitcoin aficionados are waiting with baited breath as the SEC is to announce by this Friday whether they will approve the first registered bitcoin ETF. This is not the make or break event that many think it is, though. As a matter of fact, if the ETF is denied and the bitcoin drops, I'll consider it an opportunity.

European Bitcoin Acceptance

An ETF will allow institutions to flood into Bitcoin through registered vehicles. Whether the SEC approves the Winkelvoss twins ETF is besides the point, institutions interest is already sparked and the money will come in anyway. Btstamp, one of the world's largest bitcoin exchanges, is partnering with one of the largest French banks, Crédit Agricole, to facilitate bitcoin acceptance at investment funds. According to Coindesk:

...launch a new service aimed to allow bitcoin to be accepted by investment funds.

For its side of the deal, CACEIS, the asset servicing branch of the bank, will provide services covering clearing, depositary and custody of bitcoin bought in through the exchange.

The goal of the partnership is to increase capital inflows to new investment funds by providing an alternative funding method in the form of the digital currency. Fund promoters, working with CACEIS as a transfer agent, can start accepting bitcoin for fund subscriptions as soon as Q2 2017, the firms indicated.

Bitstamp CEO, Nejc Kodrič, sees the partnership as a foothold for bitcoin to be used for mainstream, legitimate investment opportunities,

“Bitstamp’s first partnership with a market-leading, asset-servicing bank like CACEIS means bitcoin investments can now be made within fully licensed and regulated framework,” he said.

As bitcoin gains traction, it's easy to see why some investors are picking up interest. In jurisdictions with capital controls, using bitcoin circumnavigates regulatory headaches and streamlines cross-border payments.

Joe Saliba, CACEIS deputy chief executive officer, said:

“Fund promoters are constantly seeking new sources of investment capital and by interfacing them with a regulated bitcoin exchange we are supporting their business development objectives. “

Japanese Adoption

Japan has recently overtaken the US and China as the highest-volume country for bitcoin trading in the world. The reason is due to increased regulation in Japan, and the recognition of bitocin as legal tender, which allows banking instituions to deal with it directly as of April 2017. Japan is the world's 3rd largest economy and has one of the world's largest banking systems.

Chinese regulation

The PBOC advised Chinese bitcoin exchanges to prevent withdrawals until they updated their systems to comply with KYC/AML rules. This was easy to see coming since Chinese were using (or at least media reported they were using) bitcoin to circumvent China's capital controls.

China's Central Bank Eliminates Margin Trading of Bitcoin (BoomBustBlog)There have been rumors that the Chinese Central Bank (PBoC - People's Bank of China) would limit or eliminate margin trading in Bitcoin. It is now official, sort of... Two of the largest Chinese bitcoi ...Created on 19 January 201710.

Subscribe to BoomBustBlog now. I will be releasing a Buy Side Bitcoin Investment and Valuation giude within a week. It will be the only of its kind, showing the unique properties and risks of ths new investment asset. In the meantime, take note of the strong risk-adjust returns of bitcoin investent...

After reading what is essentially Fake News about Bitcoin from Financial Times, London Business School and Credit Suisse, I have created an easy to understand metric that allows anyone to compare the risks and rewards of Bitcoin to basically any currency, commodity, stock or asset class.

Credit Suisse has been posting cryptocurrency advisories over the last few weeks. They are quite one-sided, although couched in the appearance of objectivity. To explain why it's couched in the appearance of objectivity, and not actually objective, let me give you some background.

I will teach novices and experts alike how to fit Bitcoin into an investment portfolio safely and with the optimum risk-adjusted potential - along with step-by-step guides, instructions and tutorials. This first part of the series starts with the basics, obtaining and managing your bitcoin.

This is a video on the topic of the qualities of Bitcoin blockchain's censorship-proof attributes and how they apply in the world we live in today. It is imperative that you look at this as an dispassionate investor and steward of your assets, and not as a partisan or political supporter of XYZ.

Taped telephone recordings (from the bank's own systems) from inside doomed Anglo Irish Bank reveal for the first time how the bank's top executives lied to the Government about the true extent of losses at the institution.

... Anglo itself was within days of complete meltdown – and in the years ahead would eat up €30bn of taxpayer money. Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn to bail out Anglo – but Anglo's negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank.

... The plan was that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop. Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'."

... Mr Bowe's comments in the audio recording reveal that Anglo's strategy was to lure the State in, leaving taxpayers with no choice but to continue to provide loans to "support their money".

... "If they (Central Bank) saw the enormity of it up front, they might decide they have a choice. You know what I mean?

"They might say the cost to the taxpayer is too high . . . if it doesn't look too big at the outset . . . if it looks big, big enough to be important, but not too big that it kind of spoils everything, then, then I think you have a chance. So I think it can creep up."

Mr Fitzgerald, the Director of Retail Banking, is heard saying: "Yeah. They've got skin in the game and that is the key."

... The recording also shows Mr Bowe and Mr Fitzgerald laughing as they say how there is no realistic chance of ever repaying the loans.

For the first time, taxpayers get an exclusive insight into the banking shenanigans that cost Ireland our sovereignty.

The former US Federal Reserve chairman told an audience that included some of the world's most senior financiers that their industry's "single most important" contribution in the last 25 years has been automatic telling machines, which he said had at least proved "useful".

Echoing FSA chairman Lord Turner's comments that banks are "socially useless", Mr Volcker told delegates who had been discussing how to rebuild the financial system to "wake up". He said credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations had taken the economy "right to the brink of disaster" and added that the economy had grown at "greater rates of speed" during the 1960s without such products.

When one stunned audience member suggested that Mr Volcker did not really mean bond markets and securitisations had contributed "nothing at all", he replied: "You can innovate as much as you like, but do it within a structure that doesn't put the whole economy at risk."

He said he agreed with George Soros, the billionaire investor, who said investment banks must stick to serving clients and "proprietary trading should be pushed out of investment banks and to hedge funds where they belong".

It is not just George Soros.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has repeatedly said that speculation should be limited to hedge funds, and that banks should solely engage in traditional depository functions, and - because of their power to create credit - be treated as public utilities.

Many other top economists and financial experts have said that financial innovation is harmful, and have called for reimposing Glass-Steagall and for separating traditional banking from investment banking.

What got me started was the use, and misuse, of the term "innovation".

It is not financial innovation that must be curtailed. Innovation, in and of itself, is a very good thing. The issue currently at hand is that it was not financial innovation that got us into this mess. It was fraud innovation. Financial engineers attempted to create methods of circumventing regulations, laws, prudent risk management, common sense and mean market returns. For instance, taking $100 million of junk status mortgages and creating $300 million of so-called AAA exposure out of it (MBS, CDO's, CDO cubed, credit lines supporting CDO's, CDS protecting the CDO exposure. etc. - all from a simple mortgage that no one thought would be paid in the first place). That is not innovation, that is called LYING! It was thinly veiled fraud. This lying, in turn, was labeled "innovation", which it absolutely was not, and the moniker has been carried on in the media ever since.

Innovation is the personal computer! Innovation is the smart phone! Innovation is mapping the human genome! Innovation can be found in stem cell research! Innovation is discovering new ways of human learning and social interaction. All of these examples of innovation make society more productive, and more efficient. It harms none but those who would be relegated to the annals of obscelence anyway. But CDOs and credit defaults swaps as innovation!!! I'm afraid not. I bitched about this as far back as two years ago in "Welcome to the World of Dr. FrankenFinance!" There are forms of finance that are innovative, but they have nothing to do with the current malarky.

Then we have "the Great Global Macro Experiment", in which today's central bankers can be likened to mad scientists. The reflexive relationship between private sector bankers' (the Frankenstein monster's) faux "innovations" and their public sector "mad scientist" (Dr. Frnakenstein) counterparts will destroy the developed economies as we know them unless this ridiculous boom/bust cycle is put to an end. The quickest and most efficient way to do that is to let overpriced bubble assets deflate in due course and have the markets reflate them naturally based on fundamental values and stable macroeconomic conditions - and NOT through artificial (hence unsustainable, causing another boom/bust cycle) boosting of risky asset prices and synthetic suppressing of market rates in order to stimulate unsustainable demand that would have been there in a sustainable fashion in the first place if risky asset prices were allowed to deflate.

Yes, I know it's a run-on sentence, but why stop when I'm amped. I also know why the mad scientist central bankers will not let the Frankenstien assets properly correct. If they do, then it will throw the existing oligarchy off of their perch. I have dedicated several posts to this socio-economic stratification dilemma that is known as class conflict. See "You've Been Bamboozled, Hoodwinked and Lied To! Here's the Proof. What Are You Going to Do About It?" for an example of exactly what I mean. That is why the media preached "the world is coming to an end" in 2008. Read my blog. I predicted the series of events that led up to the meltdown quite accurately, and publicly (look here for the proof). Take it from someone who demonstrated that they saw what was going on well in advance. THE world was definitely not coming to an end. THEIR world was coming to an end. MY world was just experiencing a much needed, albeit a very serious, and well telegraphed correction, in the form of a near depression that would have wiped out most of the unproductive financial and (dare I utter it) intellectual capital to make room for the stuff that would move us into the next phase of productivity for the new millenium.

The "mad scientists" have prevented that cleaning of the house, and here we are now - most likely about to hit that depression-like correction anyway, and having wasted trillions of dollars of taxpayer financial capital in an attempt to save an unproductive oligarchy to which I do not belong.